(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for circulating electronic gift certificates in an online and offline system. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method for circulating electronic gift certificates in an online and offline system for unifying an electronic gift certificate management system and a mobile communication system into a single system to simplify an electronic gift certificate circulation system and allow the electronic gift certificates to be quickly and accurately purchased, gifted, and used.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Current gift certificates are classified as those issued by specific department stores, those issued by manufacturers that produce specific products such as shoes or clothes, and those such as book gift certificates and culture gift certificates issued and circulated by specific agencies that contract with chain stores that desire to sell the gift certificates. The culture gift certificates relate to plays and movies. In addition, various other types of gift certificates are currently in use or planned.
Also, a similar concept to the gift certificates includes boarding passes such as airplane tickets and train tickets, various sports tickets, and discount tickets for allowing a predetermined cost discount when a consumer shows a ticket. Hereinafter, the gift certificate represents a bill that has an exchangeable value so that a user may give it to a shop to make a purchase or get a discount on a desired product.
Prices of conventional product gift certificates are printed on the paper to be sold or circulated, which generally includes an issuance process and a circulation/withdrawal process. Regarding the issuance process, an issuance agency designs the gift certificates with its own desired format, and publishes them, during which various means needed for preventing forgery are included therein. Next, the printed gift certificates are delivered to many sale agencies, buyers directly visit the agencies at a predetermined time to buy the gift certificates, and the buyers uses the gift certificates at a shop so that the gift certificate is withdrawn and discarded. Together with this process, a system wherein a buyer remotely buys a gift certificate through the Internet and receives it by a home delivery service because of great developments of communication environments including the Internet, has also been proposed.
However, the above-described gift certificate circulation system for the products inconveniently causes temporal and spatial restrictions that require a buyer to visit the appointed sale agency at the appointed time so as to buy the gift certificate together with the cost needed for preventing forgery.
Electronic gift certificates have been developed so as to solve the problems of the conventional gift certificates, and here, a client withdraws desired money from his bank account or credit card through the Internet, a telephone, a cell phone, an ATM, or a credit card checker, and has an electronic gift certificate number assigned to write down on a specific form to use just like cash.
In this instance, when the client accesses a host of a managing agency and inputs his bank account number or a credit card number, the host detects this inputting process to access a VAN agency, and the VAN agency instructs a corresponding cooperating banking agency to withdraw a predetermined amount of cash and transfer the cash to the bank account of the managing agency when the client has input his bank account number, and the VAN agency approves the electronic gift certificate in the same manner as a credit card's cash loan service to transfer the money to the bank account of the managing agency, and bills the client in the same manner as the credit card's cash loan service later when the client has input his credit card number.
Hence, the client can make a purchase at the shops assigned by the managing agency using the printed electronic gift certificate, and can get the balance in cash. When receiving the electronic gift certificate, the shop accesses the host of the managing agency to confirm a usage status of the electronic gift certificate, and the managing agency withdraws the electronic gift certificate and deposits the money to the shop's bank account.
However, since the buyer has to buy and use the electronic gift certificate through the many above-noted processes in the present electronic gift certificate circulation system, a connection between the host of the managing agency and the VAN agency, and a connection among the VAN agency, the cooperated banking agency, and the credit card service provider, are accessed to a database system.
Further, since it is required to add a process of undergoing mobile communication service provision to the above-described processes when buying an electronic gift certificate, gifting it, and using it via a mobile communication method, their interconnection becomes more complicated to thus disturb fluent usage of the electronic gift certificates.